In NFL, Smoking Pot Can Get You Suspended Longer Than Allegedly Knocking Your Wife Unconscious

Running back Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens was involved in a very ugly offseason incident in which he reportedly knocked his now-wife unconscious at an Atlantic City casino, and his punishment from the NFL—made public today—has been widely derided as inadequate.

For Goodell, comparing the two types of offense is not an abstract hypothetical; the NFL regularly issues marijuana suspensions. Whatever his reasoning, the NFL's commissioner seems to have almost gone out of his way to treat Rice with pronounced lenience. And it is notgoingoverwell.